Written evidence submitted by End Our Cladding Scandal (RDC0145)

1. Executive Summary

1.1 End Our Cladding Scandal is a national resident-led campaign, led by volunteers who are personally affected by the building safety scandal that emerged in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire. Since the campaign was launched in 2019 by a collective of resident groups across the country, we have supported and campaigned on behalf of leaseholders and residents from thousands of affected buildings. Our campaign aims[1] and manifesto[2] are detailed on our website.

1.2 We appreciated the opportunity to speak with the National Audit Office during their research into their November 2024 report on dangerous cladding,[3] and their understanding of how the lives of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people have been drastically altered through no fault of their own. The report made public the reality of the mess we are in – from the sheer scale of unsafe buildings yet to be identified and reported, to the decades it will take to end this scandal under the existing approach, and the funding gaps that remain. We welcome the transparency as a step towards bringing this crisis to an end.

1.3 Everyone deserves a safe home in which to live, work, care for our families and make plans for our future. Yet hundreds of thousands of people remain trapped in unsafe and unsellable flats, fighting years-long attritional battles just to know when their home will be made safe and whether it will bankrupt them.

1.4 All leaseholders and residents are victims of a national scandal that has arisen due to decades of systemic failure and negligence by successive governments and the housebuilding industry, which was laid bare in extensive detail in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.

1.5 The first tragedy was a housing system which allowed hundreds of thousands of homes with life-critical fire safety defects to be built and sold. The second tragedy has been the government’s failure to get a grip of the crisis and respond effectively. This has caused serious additional harm to people’s lives by making the recovery take longer than it could have done and increasing the total cost burden on leaseholders rather than protecting them.

1.6 According to the NAO’s analysis, waiting for our homes to be made safe could take two decades of our lives. Meanwhile a new industry has sprung up, with self-interested parties spotting endless opportunities to cash in on the business of making homes safe, which should always have been safe in the first place. On top of unfunded remediation costs there are waking watches, surveys and building safety cases, years of exorbitant insurance costs, distressed property sales to cash buyers at a loss, and an inability to move for work or relationships or health reasons. Ordinary people are being put at risk of life-changing debt or forfeiture, in addition to the risk of rapid fire spread. This never-ending assault must stop.

1.7 Our recent letter to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Building Safety summarises the fresh approach that we need the new government to take if they want to get a grip of this crisis and finally end this living nightmare.[4]

1.8 We have met numerous Housing Secretaries and Ministers, and dozens of officials. The start/stop progress caused by this level of churn, and the differing priorities of new Ministers, has added to the delays in workable policy being delivered effectively. Officials frequently depart from building safety teams without effective knowledge transfer to new policy leads, who must get up to speed quickly with over-complicated legislation.

1.9 The government introduced the Building Safety Act 2022 (BSA) to bring about a cultural shift in industry, but there must also be cultural change in the way the government operates.[5] As the Prime Minister has accepted,[6] successive governments – politicians and civil servants – failed multiple times to heed warnings of the dangerous materials wrapped around people’s homes. The focus was on deregulation, and a culture of ignoring, delaying or disregarding matters affecting the safety of life. The pattern of ignoring[7] warnings simply continued[8] after Grenfell, as the government chose to minimise the scale of this crisis. We must now see meaningful change and an end to warm words which are unmatched by commensurate action.

1.10 Since 2017, countless examples of the devastation wrought on ordinary people have been ignored. We have found it shocking to hear politicians and officials categorising people who have lost their homes,[9] been forced into bankruptcy,[10] or taken their own life[11] as “edge cases.” The lack of humanity or care for victims of this scandal has severely impacted the financial and mental health of leaseholders and residents across the country,[12] and caused untold damage to the lives and life choices of people who thought they would be protected by the Government from issues they played no part in causing. We need a human-centred approach, with leaseholders and residents truly at the heart of decision-making.

2. The Government’s approach to building safety risk

2.1 Comprehensive, clear and consistent risk assessments of all fire safety defects at buildings of all heights are an essential building block for an effective and efficient building safety remediation programme, but they remain elusive.

2.2 The root causes of the current crisis include weak non-prescriptive Building Regulations and the muddle of “Class O”[13] and outdated National Classes for fire testing standards (which have, finally, been withdrawn). From major fires at Knowsley Heights[14] in 1991, to Garnock Court[15] in 1999, or Lakanal House[16] in 2009, politicians and civil servants chose to ignore the warning signs for decades.

2.3 In January 2023, former Housing Secretary Michael Gove accepted that “faulty and ambiguous” government guidance allowed the cladding and building safety scandal to happen.[17] The regulatory system was faulty and the Government “did not think hard enough, or police effectively enough, the whole system of building safety.”

2.4 From 2017, the Government’s “Expert Panel” started publishing a series of Advice Notes, followed by a Consolidated Advice Note (CAN) in January 2020. This abruptly brought in a zero-risk approach, with a focus on replacement of combustible materials on buildings of all heights – but without supporting legislation, funding or processes.

2.5 This immediately led to a deluge of life-changing remediation bills being sent to leaseholders, and ineffective and financially ruinous waking watch patrols[18] being installed. An External Wall Survey (EWS1) form had been introduced in December 2019 to confirm to mortgage lenders whether work was required to external walls, and was intended only to be used for buildings above 18m – but the CAN led to the indiscriminate use of EWS1 at buildings of all heights and an almost total freeze in the market for flats, due to a loss of confidence and certainty about which buildings needed remediation and who would pay.[19] The Government has been playing catch-up with funding and legislation ever since.

2.6 The CAN was withdrawn in January 2022 and replaced by an entirely new PAS 9980 framework to be used in Fire Risk Appraisal of External Wall Assessments (FRAEW), with a focus on “proportionality” and a more limited view of life safety. Three years later, even the authors of the PAS 9980 standard know that the quality of FRAEW assessments is hugely inconsistent, and the outcomes are subjective.[20]

2.7 A longstanding, known issue with the professional competence of certain fire engineers, which we have highlighted to officials multiple times over the years, has led to one prolific engineer being sanctioned by the Institute of Fire Engineers.[21] In turn, EWS1 forms completed by their company are no longer being accepted by major mortgage lenders. Thousands of people who thought they had escaped their living nightmare, or who bought flats based on those professional assessments, are now thrown back into the crisis. Whilst lenders agreed to “cover the cost of making existing EWS1 forms available” in July 2021[22], this was never a requirement, with estimates in April 2024[23] suggesting only 2.6% of forms had been uploaded to the Building Safety Information Portal[24].

2.8 Under the PAS 9980 approach, dangerous cladding or other unsafe materials are allowed to remain wrapped around people’s homes if safety risks are deemed to be “tolerable”. Effectively, buildings will be made safe to a standard that would not be acceptable if the building was constructed today. This has caused a range of serious issues – including endless delays in work starting, due to disputes over the scope. This often leads to multiple assessments being conducted, despite well-known shortages of competent assessors.

2.9 Insurers are also mandating remedial work to protect property, beyond that which would be recommended by the PAS 9980 standard or covered by any current funding scheme. We have participated in meetings with two insurance trade bodies who have proposed an Annex to the FRAEW advising further work required for insurance premiums to reduce. This is unacceptable and a clear sign of the tail of industry wagging the dog of government. Leaseholders are caught in the middle and forced to pay exorbitant buildings insurance premiums with no ability to challenge this or shop around.

2.10 Following a February 2023 meeting with officials, we were advised that, “Our system relies, for good reason, on standards that evolve over time in response to new scientific evidence and technology, and on professional assessments that necessarily involve a degree of subjectivity. Our system also permits some actors – like insurers – to apply their own policies in relation to services they provide [emphasis added].”

2.11 Every stakeholder knows there is a problem with risk assessment. In March 2024, we attended a roundtable with representatives from private and social building owners, managing agents, developers, lenders and insurers. The first topic was “Issues with risk assessment of external and internal defects in buildings of all heights – what more can be done to make assessments consistent and acceptable to / accepted by all stakeholders?”

2.12 A less hands-off, more prescriptive approach could include a sophisticated matrix of risk based on key factors, such as type of cladding, height, occupancy, means of escape (and so on), leading to a clear and less subjective assessment[25]. Life-critical building safety defects go far beyond cladding and the external wall, but we are still waiting for the British Standards Institute to publish a new set of standards for internal assessments, which has been pushed back to October 2025[26] – more than 8 years after Grenfell. What will happen to all the buildings previously signed off as safe, which do not meet the standard once it is published?

2.13 The Home Office has responsibility for fire safety guidance to support compliance with the Fire Safety Order, in particular relating to residential buildings. This guidance was expected to be published in 2024[27] but it, too, is still awaited.

2.14 The key question asked by all stakeholders is how they will know a building is safe. If they do not trust the standard is safe, they will continue to argue and delay. Banks will continue to refuse to lend mortgages[28], insurance premiums will never revert to normal levels[29], and building owners will continue to specify extra works at leaseholders’ expense – and the crisis will never end.

3 Progress and timelines on identification and remediation

3.1 Progress has been haphazard at best, as the government has adopted a reactive approach rather than taking control of this scandal straight away. Poorly drafted legislation and only partial protections – for only some buildings, some leaseholders, some types of defects, some proportion of their costs – have failed to deliver a comprehensive solution based on risk for all buildings, all defects, all heights, and all leaseholders.

3.2 Government funding has been announced in dribs and drabs, for limited types of cladding and building heights, and only gradually expanded. The Government chose to open registrations for the Building Safety Fund (BSF) in June 2020 with a commitment to spend only £1bn on a First-Come-First-Served basis. This led to huge numbers of applications which MHCLG struggled to process, with senior officials acknowledging at a June 2022 meeting that applications were “piling up on high”. In our view, the predominant reason for the glacial approach to approving applications was a fear of setting funding precedents that would have to be applied at other buildings.

3.3 BSF applications have continued to have years-long delays ever since, frequently taking over two years until works start. Applications for grant-funding which were already well-progressed were later transferred to developers, resulting in their progress often going backward by many months or years.

3.4 There have been a range of issues with the design and operation of grant funding schemes – from building owners not being willing to sign grant funding agreements; to state aid rules that were initially in place which required each leaseholder to complete a form; to client-side support not being provided to volunteer directors of Resident Management Company (RMC) and Right to Manage (RTM) companies where they were the building’s Responsible Entity.

3.5 Opening up the external walls of a building often leads to other fire safety or latent defects being uncovered. But where additional funding is required for these, the process for variations remains highly uncertain as variation applications enter a “black hole,”[30] with no assurance on when a determination will be made. This has been a known issue for years. The delays caused by variations can add huge costs to projects, as expenses[31] (e.g. scaffolding) continue while works may have to completely stop for long periods and even where applications for additional funding are ultimately rejected[32]. No KPIs are publicly reported on the volume, cost and time taken to approve variations; there is no transparency.

3.6 The key issue which has delayed vital safety work from starting is that funding has not matched risk, which has meant that buildings are only made half-safe, or leaseholders have been forced to pay for other works where applications have only been partially funded. The priority and focus has seemed to be the desire to move buildings to a “completed” stage, without understanding the facts on the ground and whether the building still remains unsafe.

3.7 Grant funding schemes still do not address non-cladding defects, despite those also being defined as life-critical defects in the developer remediation scheme. It is partial funding with entirely inconsistent logic. We firmly believe that there must be parity, across all funding schemes, so that all cladding and non-cladding defects are fixed regardless of the programme a building is in. This has to be the fairest approach to ensuring innocent leaseholders are protected, rather than their having to rely on pot luck.

3.8 The majority of affected buildings are mid-rise (11-18m), yet the Cladding Safety Scheme (CSS) did not even open fully for applications until July 2023, some six years after Grenfell. We believe that Homes England’s CSS has learned a range of lessons and has processes which place leaseholders and residents at the heart, with meaningful oversight of the end-to-end remediation process, including ensure that communication is fit for purpose. This is welcome; however, issues remain where non-cladding defects or variations are not funded based on current policy.

3.9 We are now also seeing increasing numbers of leaseholders in buildings under 11m coming to us for help, as the Government has only adopted an unhelpful “case-by-case” approach to low-rise buildings without any remediation funding solution – even where a professional FRAEW assessment under the national PAS 9980 standard recommends remediation and even for the most dangerous types of ACM cladding. The government continues to “hope” and “expect” that building owners and developers will do the right thing at these buildings, without any mechanisms in place to compel that to happen. We are seeing history repeat itself with innocent leaseholders in under 11m buildings being on the hook for life-changing costs, just as those in taller buildings were in the past.

3.10 Where lessons have been learned in the evolution of grant funding schemes, these have been glacially slow. There is still no central control or targeted approach based on a single version of the truth for all unsafe buildings. Disputes and unexplained delays have been left unaddressed and rumbled on with no defined route to resolve them. The government has deferred to building owners, developers or local regulators rather than getting a firm grip of the overall remediation effort.

3.11 Leaseholders and residents continue to be provided with limited information on what is happening to resolve the safety of their own homes, with no clarity on when work will start and / or complete, and no routes of redress where contractors do not abide by the Government’s Code of Practice for Remediation[33] – which is only “guidance” with no ability to enforce it.

3.12 Transferring buildings to major developers for “self-remediation” was understandable, to ensure the “polluter pays” and that taxpayer funds are protected – but it has added to disputes and delays, and the developer contract is not being visibly enforced, or not in the manner leaseholders were led to believe, with several loopholes[34] which have been exploited by the major developers since the contract was first signed.

3.13 In February 2023, we were told that the developer contract would “offer leaseholders and residents a faster, more certain pathway to remediation” and it would “encourage a consistent approach for the buildings in scope by setting detailed, clear requirements about the scope of the works [and] the standard it must meet”. The contract was marketed as featuring “strong incentives against non-compliance and safeguards that will be triggered if actors try to cut corners” with developers being required “to use dispute resolution in cases where differences cannot be resolved in other ways.”

3.14 Unfortunately, nearly two years since those bold aims were stated, we are very frequently being contacted by leaseholders of buildings in the developer scheme where there are unacceptable delays, disputes over the scope of work, unfunded works being passed off as “wear and tear,” and a lack of timely and meaningful communication. We have also met with senior stakeholders at several of the major developers that are signatories to the contract,[35] and each is operating in an inconsistent manner.

3.15 After meeting former Housing Secretary Greg Clark in August 2022,[36] we highlighted potential solutions to help ensure consistency and minimise disputes, including the creation of standard templates for access licenses and works agreements and ensuring there was an independent dispute resolution process. Recently the Government belatedly published a “joint plan” with the developers to introduce these measures.[37] There will now be draft guidance for dispute resolution by spring 2025, which will be advisory rather than mandatory – and two years too late. These delays have added to the suffering people have faced.

3.16 We previously wrote to the HCLG Select Committee[38] to share the concerns expressed by then-Shadow Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook,[39] about the mismatch between life-critical fire-safety defects in the developer remediation contract and relevant defects defined in the Building Safety Act, with a concern that developers would continue to focus on their bottom lines over our safety and the fact that buildings were only expected to be brought up to the bare minimum EWS1 standard of “B1” (combustible materials may remain but the risk is deemed “tolerable”).

3.17 We have also explicitly stated our concerns over participant developers not being required to reimburse the directly associated costs of surveys, waking watches, alarms or increased insurance – even where such measures may result from their own assessments. This seems preposterous as the Government has also explicitly stated that Remediation Contribution Orders can be brought at the First-tier Tribunal to recover such costs (except for insurance). We continue to be puzzled why developers were allowed to forego paying for interim measures in the Developer Contract with leaseholders now having to rely on the goodwill of their developer (which is very variable) or expected to pay for legal action.

3.18 We are concerned that innocent leaseholders are only able to potentially recover huge sums paid on increased insurance premiums through action under the Defective Premises Act 1972. On 27th February 2024, then-Shadow Housing Minister raised this with former Minister Rowley by asking “Will the Minister tell us why they will not allow such (insurance) costs to be recovered via an RCO?”.[40] There was no response. We are certain that if responsible parties were forced to fund increased insurance costs, we would see a dramatic improvement in both the pace and scope of remediation.

3.19 Legislation to protect leaseholders has been partial with both qualifying and non-qualifying leaseholders in buildings above 11m still on the hook for life-changing costs. Leaving any leaseholder on the hook for huge sums has only added to the delays in remediation. In January 2023, we had sight of an email from the office of the MP for Bedford, which stated that “RICS have pointed out to DLUHC that this differentiation can cause difficulties in a block with several such leaseholders who may not be able to afford their share of the remediation, stalling or slowing down any remediation works.”

3.20 Leaseholders in enfranchised buildings, having been encouraged by successive governments to take control of their homes, have been ruled out of the protections, with the government categorising these as “non-relevant buildings”. This has had devastating consequences. One of the people that officials label as an “edge case” took their own life after she realised the leaseholder protections would not help her.[41] What would officials say to Amanda Walker’s family to explain why they failed to protect her and her neighbours?

3.21 The leaseholder protections are devilishly complicated[42] and the speed at which the BSA was drafted, with little time for parliamentary scrutiny, has caused huge issues with building owners making hay of both real[43] and perceived loopholes. The BSA has had to be amended several times[44],[45],[46] which has added to the delays, with the most recent amendments added to the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024.[47] However, other promised amendments[48] – including on enfranchised buildings and the pro-rating of properties owned jointly, so that building safety law is commensurate with tax law – fell away prior to the general election. The government identified these as elements that prevented the BSA from “operating as intended,” but has left them unresolved.

3.22 The BSA has introduced onerous[49] Landlord and Leaseholder Certificate processes, which have added to the complexities in holding Building Owners to account, as some avoid their liabilities even where they have confirmed they meet the “contribution condition” (a criteria which would protect qualifying, rather than all, leaseholders). There is no auditing of certificates or oversight of which private Building Owners are taking responsibility. It remains unclear how many have paid and for what work; there is no monitoring or reporting of this.

3.23 The National Audit Office’s 2020 report noted that MHCLG expected that “legal costs of taking action are likely to outweigh the costs for remediation works in a significant number of cases.” The Government has created new legal powers to compel work to be undertaken through a Remediation Order and for costs incurred or to be incurred through a Remediation Contribution Order; but these new laws are taking time to bed in and remain open to uncertain outcomes and delays. For example, the “first legal action”[50] brought by the Government in October 2022 took 18 months, with unknown legal and administration costs. In May 2024, the Government said that, on average, five successful orders incurred legal costs of approximately £170,000 each[51] with cases expected to incur lower costs in the future. It is unclear why the costs of taking action would reduce, unless the cases are fought by the Government building on its past experience, because each case is fought by a new individual and on its own individual merits; there are no economies of experience otherwise.

3.24 The four other successful orders relate to the action brought against Wallace Estates in April 2023[52] with the Government declaring that it was successful in that case, which benefited “approximately 400 leaseholders that had faced delays to remediation.” We note that one of those buildings, Skyline Chambers, was forcibly decanted in October 2023 with leaseholders and residents trapped in the middle of this lawfare and losing their homes as a result. Strangely, remediation of Skyline Chambers is now progressing in the CSS, with the internal atriums[53] now being funded via government grant. We express our sincere thanks to Homes England for the care and support they have shown to these leaseholders; however, it is particularly distressing that once the case was over, MHCLG officials ignored leaseholders that they had relied upon to bring the legal action. The building remains empty, and the leaseholders are continuing to receive ground rent bills and service charge demands. One of the leaseholders has submitted evidence to the Committee and we would welcome the Committee asking officials for their comments on the outcome for these residents.

3.25 We also wish to highlight the case of Orchard House in Bristol, where one of the first successful Remediation Orders, granted in December 2023, stipulated a works completion date of 12th June 2024. As the Committee will see from the evidence submitted by one of the leaseholders who took this legal action, the building remains unsafe, leaseholders and residents remain trapped, and the mental, physical and financial toll has been enormous.[54] Homes England has been attempting to engage the freeholder for months but is also being ignored. In June 2020, the Housing Select Committee recommended that the Government urgently consider a much more extensive use of Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) powers, to take direct ownership of the freehold of buildings with serious fire safety defects where work had not commenced by December 2020.[55] The Government’s response was that it had “not ruled out any options, including CPOs, if the pace of remediation remains too slow.”[56] It would therefore be helpful to clarify whether the Government will introduce Compulsory Purchase Orders to ensure that there are severe penalties where building owners do not start works by a specified target date, such as at Orchard House where an RCO has been insufficient to make homes safe.

3.26 There are a range of entities that have the power to take legal action – including the government, councils, fire and rescue services, the Building Safety Regulator and Homes England. It should not be down to leaseholders to navigate a legal process when action could easily be brought at group level against rogue building owners.

3.27 We have repeatedly asked the government for data to support its claims on the extent to which freeholders will be made to pay and there being a “vanishingly small tail”[57] of leaseholders paying for remediation. In 2022, we asked senior officials for data on how many non-qualifying leaseholders it expected there to be, and if they had estimated the cost of there being no limits on which leaseholders were protected. We were told that data on this issue is “challenging.”

3.28 Based on various sources of government data, our own analysis in April 2023[58] showed that there are approximately 400,000 flats in mid- or high-rise buildings that are owned by a non-qualifying leaseholder with more than three properties, and an estimated 1.3 million leasehold flats in low-rise purpose-built blocks. The Leasehold Knowledge Partnership has also estimated there may be 510,000 flats in leaseholder-owned blocks. At our most recent meeting with Minister Norris, we asked again for data on excluded leaseholders and an estimate of costs that were being “saved” by excluding them from protection. We received a commitment that MHCLG’s statistics on non-qualifying leaseholders would be shared with us, so we wait to understand what data will be provided almost three years after the decision was made to exclude these equally blameless victims.

3.29 The target date of 2029 announced in the recent Remediation Acceleration Plan[59] is meaningless to leaseholders and residents, who are still only being provided with limited information on their own home, with no clarity on when work will start and / or complete.

3.30 It is abundantly clear that data must be at the heart of the Government’s approach as leaseholders and residents remain trapped in the middle of different regulators with different responsibilities acting under different legislation. There has been no centralised coordination, with limited resources – whether fire engineers, contractors or supplies – being allocated based on who shouts loudest or has a network of contacts rather than meaningful risk prioritisation.

3.31 The Health and Safety Executive’s Building Safety Regulator (BSR) may now hold a database of high-rise residential buildings – albeit based on information provided at excessive costs to leaseholders, due to the unhelpfully short timeframes set out in the BSA – but these are only buildings over 18m and there has been little evidence of a joined-up approach with regulators operating from differing and incomplete information; there is no single source of the truth for all unsafe buildings. This remains a key concern as regulatory activities are far from being streamlined with no targeting of limited resource.[60]

3.32 As part of the Remediation Acceleration Plan announcement, we were advised that the digitised capabilities of the CSS would be exploited in the “short term.” This would be a sensible approach and would save time and costs on setting up yet another new platform; but it remains unclear whether there will be a single interoperable version of the truth for all unsafe buildings requiring remediation and who will be responsible for putting this together. It is also unclear who will ensure that data on all “missing buildings” is collated at meaningful pace. Until this data is gathered and cleaned, the Remediation Acceleration Plan will continue to be described as “a plan to make a plan.”

4 Protection of taxpayers’ money

4.1 The overriding message from the government has been that funding is available and building owners should make use of it “at pace”; however, this belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the range of issues that are holding up work. Due to inflationary pressures, the £5.1bn allocated to building safety in 2020 and 2021 will not go as far now compared to if it had been disbursed quickly after funding schemes opened.

4.2 The Residential Property Developer Tax (RPDT), which commenced on 1 April 2022,[61] is referenced in the NAO report a handful of times; however, we understand that it is not reflected in the analysis of risks to the £5.1bn taxpayer cap. The Government previously stated that the RPDT would raise at least £2bn and would “help fund the Government’s Building Safety Package;” our understanding was that this would mean the net taxpayer contribution would be reduced to £3.1bn (before other indirect taxation income, such as VAT on remedial works) but this remains unclear as it does not seem to have been hypothecated.

4.3 We reiterate that we agree that developers should be made to fix their own buildings and contribute towards the Building Safety Levy. Following years of developers benefiting from taxpayer funding through demand-side government initiatives, this is the right thing to do. However, we remain concerned that the broad promises to make industry pay instead of leaseholders have not been kept.

4.4 In respect of social housing remediation, we note the comments made in March 2024 by Fiona Fletcher-Smith, chief-executive of L&Q and G15 chair,[62] where she outlined a list of 19 steps for every building that requires remediation – all of which take an extraordinary amount of time with uncertain outcomes and delays.

4.5 Since our relaunch in September 2020,[63] we have repeatedly called for social housing landlords to have full and equal access to grant funding – otherwise leaseholders, shared owners and tenants will effectively pay for remediation[64] through rent and other charges or through delays to maintenance work. Social housing providers are currently only able to access grant funding where costs would be suffered by leaseholders or where their financial viability is threatened, which has a severely negative impact on their ability to continue to operate.

4.6 In April 2024, we participated in a roundtable on Shared Ownership led by MHCLG and discussed the need to ensure that the Housing Secretary’s guidance on subletting and buybacks,[65] issued in December 2023, was being implemented consistently. We were advised that the National Housing Federation estimated that the cost of remediation could be as high as £5-6 billion. We believe that all social housing landlords should be able to access funding for this, but this should be predicated on all their residents being fully protected from direct or indirect costs[66] with landlords offering buyback options to shared owners with unmortgageable flats that they can no longer afford or that no longer meet their housing needs.[67]

4.7 This could be funded by a wider industry levy that includes contractors and product manufacturers amongst others, alongside a review of the duration of any levy. Making industry pay for its mistakes has been a longstanding call of our campaign and we are aware of contractors and trade bodies that have also made representations to the Government in support of this. We recognise the certainty that a levy would bring compared to the current process of companies incurring potentially enormous costs at random intervals, which we recently highlighted to the Deputy Prime Minister and officials.

4.8 We are repeatedly told by every industry actor that we meet that they all agree leaseholders should not have to pay to fix historical building safety defects. This also seemed to be the hope of the former Secretary of State, Michael Gove, in January 2022.[68] Three years later, we do not know if MHCLG or HM Treasury are considering this clearly fairer and simpler approach, or whether the government is content to continue to allow buildings to stay unsafe and leaseholders to continue to pay the price for building safety in many different ways, whilst lawyers are enriched.

4.9 We must also note that, where taxpayer funding has been provided, there has been little control of what this is being spent on, with professionals and managing agents taking a cut by adding their sizeable percentage-based fees with little evidence of oversight or benchmark data to validate these costs.

5. Plans for deploying the £1bn announced for cladding remediation in the Budget effectively and efficiently

5.1 The announcement of funding for cladding in the Autumn Budget 2024 came as a surprise and there was some confusion[69] on whether the “investment” would be new money or was simply reiterating spending forecasts or a change in the phasing of existing money. Should this be a genuine increase in spending, it would be welcome, and we share the hopes of Mr Betts[70] that this funding might be raised from product manufacturers.

6. Conclusion

“The government has repeatedly made what turn out to be pie-in-the-sky promises – and then failed to plan, resource, or deliver. The deadly legacy of a shoddy buildings regulation system has been devastating for the victims and survivors of Grenfell but is leaving a long tail of misery and uncertainty for those whose lives are in limbo. The Government must step up and show that it will put a stop to the bickering over who is responsible, who’s going to pay for the remediation – and just put this right.”[71]

6.1 For leaseholders and residents, there has been little change since the NAO’s previous report and the former Committee Chair’s comments. We urgently need a refreshed joined-up approach across government and between government and all relevant Non-Departmental Public Bodies.

6.2 A more simplified, comprehensive and centrally-driven and co-ordinated approach would mirror the proposals put forward by Labour when in opposition and provide certainty on the end-to-end remediation process. Certainty for leaseholders and residents, and certainty for developers, freeholders, contractors, insurers, lenders, and conveyancers. Adopting this approach may not be simple but it is the right thing to do, to keep the countless promises the current government made while in opposition, and ensure leaseholders and residents are truly at the heart of building safety.

6.3 Cultural change may be slow but there must now be the impetus and political will to take control of this unrelenting crisis and focus on ensuring people know when their homes will be made safe. There are a range of benefits if the current approach is simplified – whether removing vast amounts of self-interest in the process; minimising costly agent fees so that client-side support is dedicated to where the needs are most urgent; and joining up regulatory and enforcement efforts so that they are streamlined, coordinated and driven centrally, with all parties working together. Whether that is Homes England and the Leasehold Advisory Service collaborating to provide bespoke and timely updates on people’s homes, or Homes England working with the Building Safety Regulator to focus remediation and ensure statutory building control approval timescales are met.

6.4 We close by asking:

-          What lessons senior officials have learned from their legislation and funding schemes over the years and what they would change if they could go back?

-          What data the Government is collecting on mortgage lending, to validate the commitments made by the lenders two years ago that people would be able to remortgage and sell their homes?

-          What officials would do if they received a £0 valuation for their flat, as is still happening now, most recently at a building in Runcorn?

-          What consideration officials have given to the Government providing financial backing to an insurance risk-pooling scheme, as recommended by the FCA in September 2022[72] and / or creating a scheme that will succeed where the industry initiative has failed?

6.5 The Committee will read many submissions to this Inquiry which are stories of the lives of ordinary people that have been ruined. We would especially welcome the Committee asking officials what they would say to the lady who emailed us only a few days ago:

“I am sorry that I am not sufficiently competent in Word documents to be able to send my evidence.  I am an unwilling Landlord, of 7 years, longing to sell for just under 6 years, with insurance costs escalating 10x and ground rent doubling to £500 this year, and not being able to sell due to the aforementioned and still awaiting remediation.  The anguish and suffering this has and is causing me is indescribable - I feel trapped, at age 77, and fearful of never being able to sell it before my children would be inheriting the trauma.”

January 2025